Differences in Experiences Must Influence Interventions

Marc Potenza, PhD, MD, the Steven M. Southwick Professor of Psychiatry, leads the Women and Addictive Disorders Core at Women’s Health Research at Yale. His contributions to addiction psychiatry, as evidenced by his more than 600 publications, are vast and foundational for physicians and psychologists in the United States and around the world.

Recently, Potenza delivered a keynote at the Women’s Forum on Addiction and Recovery in New York City. In his keynote, “Trauma-Sensitive Interventions and Evidence-Based Approaches,” he outlined the ways women and men experience stress differently at a population-based level and, in turn, what behaviors result from their experience of stress.

For both women and men, reports of severe stress are likely associated with psychological disturbances and mental disorders. For women compared to men, stress has been linked to increased likelihood of anxiety and alcohol use disorder. In the instances when severe stress results in a traumatic reaction, trauma-focused interventions are particularly helpful for managing disturbances in coping and promoting recovery.

“It’s crucial that we better understand the experiences of women and men, and boys and girls, as we research a variety of behaviors – from addiction to gambling to internet use. It’s long been accepted that women and men differ in how they experience and recover from addiction and we, as practitioners, must take that knowledge forward in our treatment strategies,” said Potenza.

In his latest research, Potenza explores the impact of social media use on attention spans in adolescent girls and boys (approximately aged 10 to 15). A recent study found 96% of teens in the U.S. reported daily online activity, and nearly half report staying online “almost constantly.” During these years, the brain undergoes significant development and the question is – Does online time impair brain development, and potentially lead to disorders in attention?

Through the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) longitudinal study, Potenza and team evaluated data on nearly 12,000 participants from more than 20 U.S. cities to answer this question. This population-based study represented a wide variety of young people from various geographical, racial, educational, home, and economic settings. In their analysis, Potenza and team examined the relationship between online social activity (OSA, as defined by texting, visiting social networking sites, and video chatting) and the prevalence of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms specifically.

The results were revealing, especially related to girls. Overall, the team found the greater the OSA, the more ADHD problems a young teenager experienced as they grew up. More ADHD problems did not predict increased OSA. Therefore, the direction of this phenomenon is one way – from OSA to ADHD. As it relates to girls, the more time spent on OSA was linked to more ADHD symptoms. This was not observed in boys and is consistent with prior studies that have determined sensitivity to online social media impacts girls earlier than boys. The authors reflected, “These findings highlight the potential detrimental effect of online social activity time on the development of attentional processes, especially for girls, thereby offering insights that could guide the development and targeting of interventions to mitigate future risks for ADHD problems during adolescence.”